officeinsight: Random Walks

2.7.11 | Interior design – and, in fact, all design for the built environment – is purposeful. In this regard, it many be helpful, for this discussion, to categorize the major aspects of architecture and design into two areas, technique and purpose. It appears that now the profession is ready to begin, and has begun, the shift of emphasis from technique to purpose.

10.11.10 | Can aesthetics be analyzed? From the ancients to the present time, people have looked at aesthetics and their effects, both from a philosophical and historical point of view, and as a proper subject of psychology, that is, the human response to aesthetic offerings.

10.4.10 | We must address issues that are at the heart of interior design, but are too often ignored. One fundamental fact is that interior design is not a choice: we can’t avoid interior design; but every one of us chooses the quality of interior design. If there is an interior, there is no such thing as “no interior design.”

One of the most remarkable and distinctive capabilities of the human species is its ability to create its own environment in infinite variety. This is the great opportunity and challenge of interior design, and on a larger scale, urban design.

9.6.10 | While we all consider interior design as a positive force in the world, it is also of sufficient force and effect that its misapplication may produce considerable harm. Moreover, by its very nature, the interior environment, by design, can be, and has been, used to intentionally produce significant injury. A definition of the field must encompass this.

8.30.10 | In the public mind there is no understanding about what interior design is, not even confusion. So, at one end of the definitional spectrum we have the know-nothings. At the other end, we find the regulators and qualifiers, NCIDQ, the know-too-muchers or kitchen-sinkers.

3.29.10 | In part I of this article, I suggested that interior design is bringing
needed influences to the built environment to facilitate the age-old
function of information flow. Branding and collaboration have become
major themes. The growing scope and importance of branding was stressed
by John Brinker, Gensler, as a panel participant on the Future
of Design moderated by Cheryl Durst at the Architectural
Digest Home Design Show in NYC. (See Future of Design this
issue.)

3.22.10 | One interpretation of Jane Jacobs’s seminal work, The Death
and Life of Great American Cities(Vintage 1961), is that
architecture has lost its way as an important tool of information
distribution. Well, lost its way may not be the proper phrase. How
about, stuck in the middle ages.

3.1.10 | Mr. Smed has the rare entrepreneurial combination of insight and
predisposition to act. Fortunately, to this is added the ability to see
things as a whole, and what amounts to almost a compulsion to do things
better ( environmentally and for clients) and more efficiently. As a
result, anyone with an open mind can find morsels of value and
inspiration in his presentations.

2.15.10 | For all of its frustrations and follies, at times the
legal system manages to get something, if not right, at least better.
Such is the case – getting it better – with a couple of Federal court
decisions dealing with the subject of interior design legislation. The
most recent case in the U.S. Federal Court for the Northern District of
Florida was championed by the nemesis of interior design legislative
advocates, the Institute for Justice, which, in this case, helped the
profession get it . . . better. The result was a stunning victory for
interior design and interior designers: The court upheld the Florida
practice act.